Premier League plan to plug England skill gap

Future England players could be educated by professional clubs to help them break into their first teams ahead of foreigners. Richard Scudamore, the Premier League chief executive, yesterday envisaged Premier League schools being set up to provide talented local youngsters with formal education and coaching.

The idea is one response to a lack of technical training among school-age English players relative to those in Europe, a reason cited for England’s failures. “We can see clubs getting into a quasi-private education system,” Scudamore said. “The state system makes is almost impossible to find the hours.”

An 18-year-old academy player in the Netherlands would on average have completed 6,000 hours of “deliberate practice” compared with his English counterpart on 2,500 hours. Experts have identified a requirement of…